The Great Year
by Gordon Pasha
Summary: She gave up everything to save Jasper and now she's facing the consequences. Far from home and the life she's always known, Lilly must try to move on and find hope in the midst of suffering and despair. Will she be able to find the strength she needs to survive when the whole world is against her? Sequel to "Lilly's Choice."
1. Migration

**Hey, everyone. Some of you may remember that last week I published a one-shot named "Lilly's Choice." I wrote it as a one-shot because I thought that was all there was to tell. But the more I think about it, the more I feel there is still so much to be told. And I did not want to leave everyone hanging about what happens to Lilly in the end.**

**So I'm decided to do this story (which will be much longer) about what happens to Lilly after the end of "Lilly's Choice." So, without further ado, here is "The Great Year":**

* * *

**High harmonies from the Heavens resound**

**As the stars complete their Saturnal round**

**What wondrous happening does this portend?**

**In fire or frost, how shall the cosmos end?**

* * *

The march had been hard. For Lilly, it had been harder that for anybody else. After all, she was not used to having to go through so much physical exertion at one time. The whole pack had been going nonstop for several months now with only a few hours rest per night. And there was hardly any time for hunting and there were so many that it was practically guaranteed that most would go unfed in any event. Not that that was much of a concern to Lilly; she knew that she would go unfed even in the event that there was enough to eat. It was, after all, harder for her than the rest. This was not her pack, after all.

She felt herself growing parched from walking for so long in the hot summer sun. As she walked, she noticed a small stream up ahead. It was not much, but it was something. Lilly stopped to inspect it. She cringed a little; the water was stained brown with mud and dirt. Yet, she didn't have much choice. She felt herself becoming dangerously dehydrated; they hadn't let her have a drink of water in over twenty-four hours. She would have to drink something, anything, soon. It was either this or nothing at all.

Lilly closed her eyes, not wanting to look at what she was putting into her mouth, and lowered her snout into the water. Slowly, she lapped up the muddy liquid, trying to keep her mind off of how horrible it tasted. But, it was water, so that was at least something good about it.

The Lilly felt a sharp blow to her rear. She was sent falling forward, he face splashing into the muddy water. Her lavender eyes opened just long enough for her vision to go brown and then black as the thick mud poured into them.

"Get going, you!" shouted the wolf who had just kicked her into the mud. "Did we say you could stop?"

Slowly, Lilly found her footing and pulled herself out of the dirty water. She wiped the mud out of her eyes as best she could with her paw. Then she turned to see who had just done this to her.

It was a yellow wolf, not particularly large, but bigger than she. He did not appreciate how long it was taking her to follow his command. He spat in her face and barked, "What, are you deaf now? Get going, I said!"

Lilly once again wiped her face with her paw and then offered her attacker a large, warm smile. "All you had to do was ask," she said politely.

She then turned around and starting walking again. The yellow wolf seemed satisfied by this and did not trouble her any further. She knew that her face was still covered in mud but she also knew that it did not make much of a difference anyway. She had not been allowed to bathe herself since leaving Jasper and, with all that they had made her endure, she was positively filthy. In fact, she was so covered in dirt and mud and grime that if you saw her at this moment you would not even recognize her special white gleam. Her fur now looked like some combination of grey and brown, not too different from that of a normal wolf. Lilly tried to cheer herself up by thinking of how Kate, Humphrey, and Garth would probably be unable to recognize her now.

It didn't work.

But this was not the first humiliation she had endured and it was far from the worst. Lilly touched her side briefly where there was still some pain from when a large wolf had thrown her against a rock – just for fun – and broken a rib or two or five. That had been near the outset of their journey a few months back and Lilly figured her ribcage was mostly healed by now. Not that she ever really was left alone long enough to properly check.

In moments like this, Lilly thought of the happy life she had left behind her forever. She thought of Garth and how much she loved him and of how she'd never see him again. She thought of the family they had always wanted but would never be able to have together. And, at these moments, she felt herself giving into despair.

But then she'd force herself to suck it up. "You brought this on yourself," she'd say to herself. "It was your choice. You deserve everything that's happening to you."

During a particularly melancholy moment, she added, "I bet no one in Jasper has even noticed you're missing. They never did before."

She cast her eyes down at the thought of how she never mattered to anyone. She was not even sure she mattered to Garth. She had sacrificed her freedom and her life for him and everyone else, but they would never know what she did or why. And it was only because she was so sure that they'd forget about her that she had had the courage to sacrifice herself in the first place.

When she felt like these thoughts were about to break her, Lilly forced herself to look around at the natural beauty all around her. She had no idea where she and the others were but it did not seem familiar. They had gone very far, she knew, and this was not likely to be any place she would recognize. She had to admit, it was rather thrilling to get to see so many places she never could have dreamt of seeing before.

"It won't be long now," she overheard the yellow wolf say to someone else. "Soon we'll be back home. We've spent so much time up in Alberta that even I miss good ol' Oregon!"

The name meant nothing to Lilly. She was, admittedly, not very proficient on geography so she could not truly appreciate just how far she was from Jasper Park. Not that it would have made much of a difference; she already felt she had set foot in another world when she left Jasper.

Lilly just continued walking. There was nothing else to do but walk and hope that somebody did not decide she would make a good punching-bag. She felt like she had already had enough of that to last a lifetime. But then, she noticed that everyone else had suddenly stopped. She just managed to stop herself and avoid crashing into a large grey wolf – something she knew would have disastrous consequences.

She took a few steps forward to see what everyone was so fascinated by. They were all looking down over a hill into the dense forest beyond. It was dark, it was drab, it was spooky, like some haunted forest out of an old fairy tale. Lilly shuttered as she looked down upon it.

And then she could just barely hear the leader say, up ahead, "We're home."

* * *

**So what does everybody think? Is it worth continuing?**


	2. Humiliation

**Here's Chapter 2 of "The Great Year." Much like the last chapter, this one serves to set things up for what is to come. The actual main plot will begin in a chapter or two. It should be interesting.**

**Also, this is not connected to this story, but I wanted to mention it anyway. DLW just completed his story "Alpha and Omega: The Week After" earlier this week and I'd like to recommend it to anybody who has not read it yet. It is one awesome and powerful tale and I do not think you'll regret checking it out. **

**But as for now, read on:**

* * *

Lilly sat out on the cliff of her new den, set in a small peak of the Cascade Mountains overlooking the wide forest. It was now official. She was mated to a wolf other than Garth. Now, for the first time in months, she was able to cry alone.

She thought back to how this had all happened. As they approached the pack's home territory, the pack leader, Conn, had had her brought to him. He had looked her up and down in all her muddiness and said, "Look at you! Don't you have any concept of cleanliness at all? Don't you care about your own appearance? I can't have my new bride looking like that!"

Lilly turned her face away while the whole crowd around her burst into laughter. She tried to be strong as jeers of "What a slob!" came from the onlookers. Never mind that she had been one of the most consciousness wolves in Jasper where bathing was concerned and it was they who never allowed her to clean herself. But she would be strong. She remembered how practically every day after she had married Garth, Kate had told her that she could no longer be just a funny, playful Omega and now had to be strong for the pack. This was not her pack, but she knew she still had reason to be strong.

"I can't have her looking like that!" Conn repeated. "They'll wonder what we invaded the north for anyway if we bring back something as revolting as that. Glaucon, Adeimantus, take her to the nearest stream and get her clean!"

What followed was more unpleasant humiliation as the yellow wolf, Glaucon, and the grey wolf, Adeimantus, had taken her to the nearest clear stream. Their idea of bathing her was to dunk her violently and repeatedly under water until the dirt and muck had all come off.

Splash! Lilly felt the freezing water engulf her completely. It poured into her eyes and mouth and nose and ears, making her feel like she was about to be crushed by the influx. It filled her lungs and made her begin to choke and gag. And then she was pulled out. A moment of sunlight and warmth – though the breeze made Lilly just as cold as she had been under water – and then: Splash! Another minute of drowning before being pulled up again. Temporary relief and then: Splash! Again and again.

Lilly had at first tried to resist this, not so much deliberately but as a natural survival response. But the two wolves were much bigger and stronger than she, so it made no difference how much she flailed. Soon enough, even her survival response was dulled. She just prayed that soon she would be clean and, not for the first time in her life, cursed the misfortune of being born with white fur.

During one of these moments, Lilly heard Glaucon express to Adeimantus confusion as to why it was taking so long for her fur to become clean.

"There is no way it should be taking this long!" Glaucon said. "It never takes me this long to clean myself!"

Lilly could at least take comfort in the fact that Glaucon apparently used the same method to clean himself and was not specifically signaling her out for punishment. But given his smell, she could tell that he was not nearly as proficient in self-grooming as he thought.

"Ah, she's just being stubborn," Adeimantus responded. "She's staying dirty just to spite us!"

Lilly yelped uncontrollably, causing a torrent of water to flow into her lungs and gag her, when Adeimantus kicked her side.

"That ought to teach her!" he said proudly.

Somehow, perhaps as a result of her prayers, Lilly was at last made clean and white again by the rushing water. At which point, she began to catch her breath, but had no time as she was soon jerked away by the two brutes.

She had then been marched into the heart of the territory, just like a prisoner in a Roman triumph.

"Come out, everyone!" Conn shouted. "After a year and a half, we have finally returned victorious! The Jasper wolves have been defeated and their hubris has been humbled – and we bring a prize to prove it!"

He shoved Lilly forward as the few wolves who had remained at home came out to see the victorious army in triumph advancing. Lilly squirmed as she felt their mocking eyes fall upon her and their happy cheers cut her to the bone. Despite this, however, Lilly's lavender lights immediately focused on a strange sight; another white wolf, a male long and slender. His blue eyes locked with hers for a few moments. He smiled furtively at her, causing her to avert her eyes in embarrassment. Beside him stood an older golden-brown wolf, female, who cast upon her an evil eye. Lilly shuttered as they exchanged looks.

Soon after had followed the farce of a wedding. It had brought back memories of the happiest day in Lilly's life, when she had married Garth. But now those memories were just painful to her as she was forced to go through the exact same ceremony with someone else, someone she did not love, and someone she was sure hated her. They went through it all; the accepting of the scents, the biting of the ear, and the rubbing of noses. But it was different this time, transformed utterly from a symbol of hope and love to one of mockery and despair.

Yet, however, that was somehow not the greatest humiliation Lilly had to endure that day. For, just as they were about to rub noses, Lilly pushing hers forward shakily and nervously to meet the big one of Conn, there was a loud shriek. Lilly felt herself pushed to the ground as the old female wolf she had seen before, the golden-brown one, burst in between them.

"A curse, a curse, a curse on the Cascade Pack!" shouted she madly. "Do you know not what you do? You are sealing your own fate, you fools! The white wolf shall be the doom of you all! The white wolf shall be the doom of you all! Doubt it not!"

"Oh, shut up, Sybil!" Conn said, pushing her out of his way. He then offered Lilly a paw to help her up. But Lilly still wanted to appear strong. So she forced herself to stand and go through with the last part of this perverted ceremony.

The celebrations followed, though they were more celebrating victory in war than the actual wedding. It made Lilly sick to hear the proud insults directed at her friends and family – insults not worth repeating here – or the gloating over Tony's murder (Glaucon and Adeimantus soon fell into a good-natured argument over who had delivered the killing blow). In one of the day's few fortunate events, Lilly had managed to find a small corner to hide herself in until the wild revelry was completed.

Then she had been taken to Conn's den for the night. Naturally, this was the moment Lilly had been dreading since the marriage ceremony had begun. But much to her surprise and the small amount of relief fate still allowed her, Conn did nothing to her when they arrived and instead immediately curled up by himself and went to sleep.

Briefly, a crazy idea floated through Lilly's mind. He had left her all alone with him and had now gone into a deep sleep. It would not be difficult even for her to sneak up quietly to where he lay and….

Lilly quickly shook the thought out of her head. There would be no more violence, ever. After all, was that not the reason she had given herself to Conn in the first place?

So, instead, Lilly had walked out onto the cliff as the other wolves retired to their dens and the forest became quiet. She looked out and saw the wide expanse of trees before her, covering the whole of the valley floor in darkness under the shining moonlight. At the edge of the forest, Lilly could just make out the features of a river by the moonlight reflected therein. Somehow, it did not seem so frightening in the darkness. Instead, it seemed magical, enchanting, perhaps a little dangerous but all the more beautiful for that.

She wished Garth was there to share it with her.

And that was what caused Lilly to cry.

* * *

**What is next for Lilly?**

**Read on.**


	3. Decadence

As tears streamed down her face, Lilly heard someone coming up behind her. Her heart started to race. She did not know who or what it could be, but given that she was surrounded by enemies, it could only be bad. Expecting the worst, Lilly turned to face whoever or whatever was coming up behind her.

To her surprise, it was the white wolf from earlier, his fur the same gleaming color of her own. She was surprised; his eyes seemed kind. They were the first kind eyes she had seen in several months.

"I'm sorry if I startled you," he said with a warm smile.

Lilly did not know what to make of this. Was he really trying to be friendly, _to her_? She could not believe it, and she did not know what to do, so she made herself smile back. But the visitor could tell that it was hollow. He looked into her eyes, which were now red from crying, and he could see the truth.

"You've been crying, haven't you?" he asked gently.

She nodded a little.

He looked thoughtful. "I suppose it can't have been easy for you," he said. "I heard what happened. I'm sorry you had to go through what you had to go through."

Lilly wiped her eyes with her tail. "Y-you're apologizing… _to me?_"

"Yeah," he said, "looks like I am."

"W-why?"

"Because, unlike these brutes that surround us, I know this war between our packs wasn't your fault. You're paying for the sins of others. I know it must have been hard to have your own family give you up – and it was because of our mutual fault, no doubt."

Lilly shook her head ever-so-slightly. "My family didn't give me up. I gave myself up. They didn't even know. I just knew that they would die if somebody didn't do something… and I was the only one who would."

Understanding filled her visitor's bright blue eyes, "Ah, how brave you are, little one! If only bravery counted for anything in this world."

Lilly smiled bashfully and looked down at the rocky cliff. Even the adversity of her circumstances could not rid her of that inward mixture of flattery and embarrassment that compliments always inspired.

"There, now why can't we see more of that beautiful smile?" he said as he watched her. "And eyes as luminous as those should not be made red by crying."

Lilly let out a meek giggle as more compliments came her way. The visitor sensed he was winning her over. He walked closer until he was standing right beside her.

"What's your name?" he asked as warmly as he could. He had never heard it, despite listening all day to stories of the Jasper war. This was mostly because no one else saw fit to use her proper name and just referred to her as "that white mongrel."

"Lilly," she answered quietly. "My name is Lilly."

"Ah, a beautiful flower!" he exclaimed. "So delicate and sweet! I should have known."

Lilly once again looked away. In a voice barely above a whisper, she asked, "Wh-what's your name?"

"Cyril, don't you know," he responded.

"Oh," she said, still looking away.

"I've offended you," Cyril said.

"No, it's not that," she answered, trying to find the words. "It's just that…. I'm not really used to people being so nice to me. Especially not here."

Cyril nodded. "Of course. I should have known. But wolves like us have to stick together. We're different than these philistines. Our white fur shows on the outside what is true on the inside. Whereas they love power, we love beauty. And they hate us for it."

Lilly tilted her head back down at her paws. "At least it must be easier for you. At least this is your home."

Cyril shook his head. "This isn't my home. This isn't really home to any of us."

Lilly looked up at him in surprise. "Wh-what? Where's your real home?"

Cyril chuckled. "It's true. Our real home was the one we were forced from. This pack is large because it started out as several separate packs in California. Then those wretched cur dogs decided to take our homeland from us! And so we had to flee up here to this miserable place! Those of us who survived, that is."

Lilly studied her paws once again. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"You couldn't have," Cyril said. "None of the philistines ever bothered to explain it to you, did they? Oh, how they hate us!"

"But why do they have to hate us? If we all suffered, should we all be able to get along?" Lilly asked.

Cyril smiled wistfully. Lilly's eyes looked up, without her face moving upward, and she saw that he was now looking past her rather than at her.

"Ah, my poor flower," said he, "with an attitude like that, things are going to be so hard for you hereafter."

"But there's supposed to be peace now!" Lilly protested. "I gave myself up. Now there's supposed to be peace!"

Cyril turned his gaze back to Lilly. She almost jumped back from the wildness that was in his eyes now, the weird little smile his mouth was slowly curving into. He said, "There's no such thing as peace in this life, Lilly. There's just decadence. That's what it's all about, decadence. Beauty and death, they're inseparable. And now that we've brought back beauty from the north, death has to rise up from the south. More death is coming, you mark my words."

Lilly did not know what to make of this. Something inside of her shuttered. She felt the old instinct to go hide behind a crag or in a log. She did not like what Cyril was saying, she did not want to think that more death would come after everything she had been through, but there was more to it than that. What truly scared her was the thrill in his voice when he mentioned death. That was what sent shivers down her spine.

* * *

**What did Cyril mean when he said, "More death is coming?"**

**Read on. **


	4. Awakening

**Here is our last prologue chapter. In this one, we finish setting things up and get ready to enter the proper part of our story. I think, by the end of this one, you'll be able to see what the plot is going to be.**

* * *

But before this conversation could go any further, Conn's voice came from out of the den, "Cyril, what are you doing here?"

Cyril turned his attention away from Lilly and to his chief, "Glaucon and Adeimantus wanted me to tell you that they caught a group of cur dogs crossing into our territory. They say they took them out with relative ease."

Conn, when he had first answered, was half-asleep and spoke drowsily. But as soon as he heard this, he bolted to his feet. He came blustering out of the den. "Where is Glaucon? Where is Adeimantus? I want them to report immediately! Oh, I hope they haven't done what I think they've done! I gave them express orders forbidding it!"

"They did have to defend the homeland, didn't they?" Cyril said, with just a hint of mockery in his voice.

"Not like this, not like this," Conn said. "Go, get them both and make them come here! They have a lot to answer for!"

"Yes, fearless leader," Cyril said cheekily before sauntering down the path and into the darkness.

Conn now turned to Lilly. "You see?" he barked. "You see what I have to put up with? A bunch of murder-happy vigilantes! It was the same thing with Tony. I told them not to kill him but they did it anyway! But why should anybody listen to me? I'm only the absolute ruler of this pack, after all!"

Lilly was so frightened by the outburst that she began to back away, nearly backing straight off the cliff. She could feel her back paw just barely scraping over the edge. With a gasp almost of panic, she just managed to force it back onto the ledge. Conn realized that, given everything she had been through, Lilly had good reason to be so timid where he was concerned.

"I'm sorry," he said in a gruff manner, but one that suggested he was trying to be kind. "I forgot that you have no clue what's going on here."

Lilly now sat down and hid her face as though her parents were scolding her. Conn began to move his paw toward Lilly's shoulder. He noticed, however, that she flinched as it approached. He drew it back.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said, trying to show some warmth. "I promise that I won't do a thing to hurt you as long as you're under my care."

Lilly looked down at her paws and then away over the cliff. Conn tilted his head; getting her to open up to him was harder than he thought it would be. Then again, it had been so long since he had been married.

"I'm sorry about some of the things your pack had to go through," he said to her, trying another route. "But if your father had just kept faith with us, we wouldn't have needed to go through with any of it."

Lilly closed her eyes, trying and failing not to think of all the death and destruction she'd seen. So many had died. She remembered seeing them bring in Sweets after she had been mauled by one of the attackers' raids. She had been completely unrecognizable. And then there was the image of Tony's head, delivered as a chilling warning, his cold dead eyes fixed unmoving on his daughter-in-law. Lilly honestly could not see how her father not keeping his promises could have justified any of that, let alone all of it.

Conn surmised what was going on in her mind. "You lost friends, no doubt," he said, "and maybe family too. You probably wonder why it had to be like that, how we could do that to people you cared about. Well then, tell me, why did the curs have to do that to us? Why did my wife, my children, have to die at the Pit River? Were they any more guilty than you were? But nothing stops those fiendish hellhounds. They would conquer the world, all for their 'liberty' and their 'justice.' Can we wolves do less? Tell me that, can we do less?"

Lilly was on her feet in an instant and sped past her new mate. She was being yelled at again. She did not like it, it hurt, and subconsciously she could not let herself endure it. Without thinking, she dashed past Conn and into the den which they were now supposed to share. There, she huddled in the cold and dark, shuttering, hoping with all her heard that Conn would not follow, though knowing full well that he would.

Conn realized that he had spoken wrong again. He silently cursed himself for it. Now he would never get the little white wolf to come out of her shell, he thought. He had to follow her, he had to try again. So he took a few steps toward the cave.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have yelled," he said.

He could see Lilly shuttering by herself in the cave and could hear whimpering noises coming from her. She had her eyes closed and did not open them even after he had apologized. Conn knew how she must feel.

"I'm sorry, too," he said slowly, "about what they did to you on the way back here. It was terrible, degrading, and no wolf should have to go through those things. If I could have stopped it, I would have. But I can't control them when they're like that. They wouldn't have listened to me."

He now entered the cave and stood beside Lilly. She could sense his approach and began to shiver more uncontrollably. Conn could see under her tremors that she was also bracing herself for something, as though she expected him to hit her. He knew that she probably did.

He now gently laid his paw on her shoulder. She yelped as though she had been burnt and quickly pulled it away. Her force was such that she toppled backwards and hit the ground on her back. Lilly now opened her eyes and looked up at Conn. In those lavender lights, he could see nothing but fear, dread, and anguish.

Clearly the thing he said about not hurting her had not gotten through.

Time to try again, he thought. "I know this isn't the life you wanted to live," he said, "and I'm not the wolf you wanted to spend your life with. Well, quite frankly, you're not the wolf I wanted to spend my life with either. But we're stuck with each other, so we might as well make the best of it. We could be happy with each other, if we just gave it a little effort. If you just give me a chance, you'll see. What do you say?"

Lilly merely stared her lavender eyes into his blue ones. She seemed even more terrified than she was before. Still on her back, she put all four paws to the ground and used them to carry herself backward until the darkness began to obscure her white form. Conn now saw that he was not going to get through to her. He turned away with a sigh and sadly walked back to the cliff.

Once she had the den to herself, Lilly began to calm down. She lifted herself up and, once she worked up the courage, cautiously looked out. She saw Conn sitting there by himself in the moonlight, just where she had been when she had been alone. She began to take a few steps forward. Now, watching him for the first time, she began to comprehend what he had been saying to her – everything had just been a jumbled noise before.

For a brief moment, she even thought about comforting him – a wild and crazy idea. But it was shaken from her mind by the sound of two sets of paws on the path. Conn swiftly turned as Glaucon and Adeimantus came into view, carrying something between them that Lilly could tell was white and rust-colored. Lilly backed further into the den so that they would not see her.

But she did not need to be close to them to hear what they were saying, for Conn was very angry at his two subordinates.

"How could you two be so thick and disobey my orders?" he hollered. "I said not to engage! Keep them from our borders but do not engage!"

"Relax, sir," said Glaucon, with a hint of impertinence in his voice, "it was just one of those militias that come up here sometimes. The curs won't even notice they're missing, you mark my words."

"Yeah," Adeimantus added, "they crossed into our borders and they paid the price. It's not like it was an actual army of theirs."

"Oh, no?" Conn asked. "Then what's that you've got in your paws? A banner of their nation, that's what! They don't give those to militias. That must have been an army of some sort!"

Glaucon and Adeimantus, suddenly realizing what they had done, threw down the banner at Conn's feet. Lilly could not make it out, but Conn could see it clearly. Mud and blood covered much of the once stainless-banner and several large tears ruined the fine cloth, reducing it almost to shreds. But still, Conn could make out the picture of an orange-brown cur dog, looking angered and fierce, against the white field. Above it was a golden scroll in which was written in black letters the legend, "**CUR REPUBLIC**".

"We did what we thought was right," Glaucon said quietly.

Conn growled loud enough that Lilly shivered a little more and hid her face behind a rock for a moment, despite the fact that she was in no danger from his fury. "But you didn't think! That's the problem, you never think! You two may have just sealed the fate of our whole nation! We could all be annihilated this time!"

"Do you really think it will come to war?" Adeimantus said, his voice tinged with guilt and fear.

Lilly's shivering now increased tenfold at the thought of another war after she had gone through so much to end one. After all, had she not given up everything just so that there would be peace? True, real, lasting peace? And now, here she was, a lone stranger in a home not hers, and yet still haunted by the specter of war. But it was Conn's answer which would make her whole body go numb.

"They won't let this stand," Conn said. "They'll come, and when they come, they won't go back until they've destroyed us all. It's their way. And for us, their way means death."

His eyes focused once again on the stainless banner before him, now all stained and soiled.

"You boys thought you were doing something great for us and defending the pack," said he, "but I'm afraid, in the words of a great general, 'We have done nothing but to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.' "

* * *

**_Here Ends the Prologue of The Great Year_**

**Read On.**


	5. Cur Non?

_**Here Begins Book the First of The Great Year:**_

_**The Noble Tail of Bummer and Lazarus**_

* * *

**"I ask in vain, you do not reply.**

**Then list to me and I'll tell you why:**

**Because we were what you would be,**

**A young republic - entirely free.**

**Cur Non?"**

**- Words of Bummer**

* * *

_San Francisco_

"A Cur army! Why did it have to be a Cur army?" exclaimed a large Newfoundland-type dog as he sat at the end of an alleyway. He was, for the most part, black all about him, but his feet and the wide streak running from his muzzle to his stomach were both white. His face would have been friendly and kind, except for an unfortunate overbite which gave him the appearance of fierceness. Though surely, that was an emotion usually remote from his character, except when it could be demonstrated in a good cause. For he seemed to be a friend of good causes, a champion of the weak, a hero of the people. This was the mighty Bummer, of which so much has been said and written.

"It wasn't a Cur army. It was just a local militia," said his friend, a dog resembling somewhat a Greyhound or a Labrador. He was about as tall as his friend, if not an inch or two taller, but he was the skinniest and sickest-looking cur dog you'd have ever laid your eyes on. He was all bones and as he paced back and forth, his back leg moved with a slight limp. And he was yellow, the most sickly color of dark yellow imaginable. It seemed as though he had come back from the dead. For this reason, among others, it was fitting that his name was Lazarus.

"Led by a Cur officer," Bummer countered. "Why did they have to be led by a Cur officer? Now the whole nation is calling for blood! The papers are decrying the so-called 'Oregon massacre' and the representative from Sausalito wants to know what the government plans on doing to avenge this atrocity."

Lazarus chuckled. "Well, with all due respect to the eminent gentle-dog from Sausalito, he is a pint-sized little whelp of a Yorkie mix who pounces on anything the government does just to make himself look a little larger. We don't have to concern ourselves with him."

Bummer sighed. "Maybe not with him, but people are starting to ask questions. They are saying that the dignity of the Republic is forfeit if we don't redress this wrong. That the lives of our citizens up north are at risk if we don't make a show of force. There are even those who accuse us of not caring because we live in a large human city that the wolves would never dare attack. Those types talk of secession. I think we might need to send an army into the area just to keep the peace."

"Then what's the problem?" Lazarus asked. "Send in an army and be done with it."

Bummer shook his head wearily. "I just fear that it might become another tragedy like the Pit River. That should have never happened and if it hadn't been for a few cowboy generals, it never would have. After that happened, I can't help but wonder if we could ever have a moral right to do anything to those wolves."

"We do live in the _Wild West_," Lazarus said nonchalantly as he pulled a container of old Chinese from out a dumpster and began to pull out noodles from it.

"Save some for me," Bummer responded. "But it's not the 'Wild' West anymore. You know, sometimes I wish it still was. I wish it was 1862 all over again. You remember that year? You and me, fighting back-to-back, side by side to save the curs and found the republic."

"Glory days," Lazarus muttered as he tried to wave some soy sauce off his paw.

"Choices were simpler back then. You knew what right and wrong where. You knew what you had to do and you did it. Now everything's all jumbled and confused. I don't know what to think anymore. I don't even know what to do!" Bummer put his face in his paws. The weight of the world was upon him.

Lazarus now put down the Chinese take-out. His face became deathly serious, as deathly as the yellow color of his coat. "You must go north," he said.

"What?" Bummer looked at him in shock from between his paws.

"If you must send an army to the north, then, by all means, send an army," Lazarus explained. "But you must be the one to lead it. If you want this to go by well, without another Pit River fiasco, if you want this to end before the whole wolven people are annihilated, you must go north. Only a great dog, one that our forces trust and have absolute faith in, can rein in their most brutal instincts."

"We have plenty of capable generals," Bummer said. "Why must it be me?"

Lazarus approached and circled him. "Because no one is more beloved than you are. You know that this is hard enough for me to admit, but no one could ever be more beloved than you. When you speak, our people regard it as though a god has spoken. They may listen to the generals, but they revere you. Besides, your name is feared by all our enemies as much as it is loved by our people. I thing you would only have to raise your banner in Oregon and the wolves will retreat and surrender. It can only be you."

Bummer rose to his four feet. "You're right, Lazarus, of course. It has to be me."

Lazarus nodded wistfully as Bummer walked past. "Yes, it has to be you, as always. I'll just stay here in San Francisco and keep the ship of state from hitting running aground, shall I?" From the tone of his voice, he was not thrilled with the idea.

Bummer put his paw on Lazarus' shoulder. "Nonsense. I fear that these wolves may be up to more than we suspect. In which case, we shall need your famous cunning to get us through."

Then he smiled. "Besides, what would Damon be without Pythias?"

Lazarus smiled back as he grasped the import of these words.

* * *

**The historical Bummer and Lazarus were two cur dogs of the 1860s who became San Francisco legends for their unique and unbreakable bond of friendship. If you want to learn more about them, then you might want to check out ****Malcolm E. Barker's excellent biography, _Bummer and Lazarus: San Francisco's Famous Dogs_, which reproduces all of the news stories that chronicled their adventures.**

**The quote at the top comes from the poem "Cur Non? A Growl Form the Pound" which first appeared in the June 11, 1862 edition of the Daily Evening Bulletin and addressed a controversial anti-cur law. It was, indeed, attributed to Bummer.**

* * *

**Events transpire faster than the Cascadians would like. But what does this all mean for Lilly?**

**Read on.**


	6. Bluebirds and White Wolves

Lilly wandered slowly through the grey woods. Something important was going on back at the mountains. Conn had called a meeting of the leaders of the entire pack. It was a meeting Lilly had been barred from. Though Conn would have liked to see her there, his lieutenants had other ideas and refused to have the foreign wolf – they had ceased calling her a 'mongrel' and had now moved on to the equally charming epitaph, 'fiendish white devil' – anywhere near their war council. So, for the first time in countless months, Lilly had been left to herself.

She had never been this far in the woods before. She did not know if she could make it back on her own. It would have been natural for her to be scared by the possibility, but after how her life had turned out, she could not care less. So she just wandered. The sun was shining brightly at the birth of day and the merry morning birds were making their marvelous music, but somehow the forest still seemed forbidding. Whether it was because the grey mists which rolled through the area and lazily caressed everything they encountered or the pensive melancholy of her own mood, Lilly could not help but feel that a certain gloom was revealing itself among the darkened trees.

And then, suddenly, she heard music. Not the music of the birds, but it seemed to be coming from a creature of her own species. She followed the noise, the low but persistent humming, "Hm-hm-hm-hm-hmmm-hmmm-hmm," until she reached a spot where a tree had fallen over and come to lean on another one at such an angle as to form a natural seat for anyone adventurous enough to climb into it. And in that seat was, to Lilly's surprise, none other than Cyril, comfortably laying on his back and looking up to another tree nearby.

Lilly came to a quiet halt as soon as she saw him, but she must have made some noise or other, for Cyril was immediately alerted to her presence. The moment his eyes alighted on her, they seemed to fill with a sparkling warmth and charm. "Why, flower," he said, "what are you doing out here?"

"Oh, um, I'm sorry," Lilly began, looking away in embarrassment. "I didn't mean to disturb you or anything. I was just out wandering. I'm sorry, I'll go away."

Cyril quickly leapt off the trunk of the fallen tree and with surprising agility landed right in front of Lilly. "Nonsense! I could always use more of your charming company."

Lilly looked around cautiously. She did not know how to react. "Well… um… okay, I guess?"

He smiled. "You're probably wondering what I'm doing out here by myself so early in the morning, eh?"

"Well, um…"

"Trust me, I do have a very good reason." Cyril pointed to the top of the nearby tree, to the very spot on which his eyes had been affixed when Lilly arrived. "Up there is a nest of bluebirds that make the most remarkable music. I come out here every morning to watch them as they prance about the branches and I listen to their remarkable song. Take a listen for a moment, flower."

Lilly closed her eyes and just concentrated on listening to the bluebirds and their song. As she heard it, a whirling rush of blue colors flashed before her mental sight, inspired by the sweet strain of the birds' song. She smiled.

Cyril smiled as well. "What did I tell you, eh?"

Lilly opened one eye a bit. "It's beautiful!"

They stood there and listened together until the bluebirds flew away to collect their morning breakfast. At this point, Cyril and Lilly also commenced wending through the forest.

"You never answered my question before, flower," Cyril said, after a long period of silence.

"Hm?" Lilly said nervously, thinking she had accidentally been rude. "What question?"

"The one I asked you when I first saw you today. What were you doing out here so early in the morning?"

"Oh, that," Lilly said, her voice trailing off as she began to characteristically study her paws. "Well, their having a meeting of the pack leaders and… and…."

"They forgot to mail you an invitation, is that right?" Cyril asked.

"Something like that," Lilly answered sadly.

"Cheer up, flower!" Cyril said. "Why would you want to go to some stuffy old pack meeting anyway? There's too much life to be lived out here to worry about any of that."

"But… but… I just want them to respect me."

Cyril looked at her as one might a silly child. "They'll never respect you. You're too beautiful. They don't respect beauty."

"Besides," Lilly said, not really paying much attention to what they just said. "I think they're talking about war."

"Then you definitely don't want to go," Cyril said confidently. "Trust me, all that war-planning and tactical discussion and strategy is too tedious. Better to avoid it all. Life's too short to be boring."

But Lilly was not quite listening to Cyril's talk. She had something else on her mind. "Do you think there will really be another war?" she asked.

"Oh, there's always another war," Cyril answered matter-of-factly.

Lilly shook her head slightly. "It was all for nothing, then. Everything I did was all for nothing."

Cyril eyed her as though he was trying to figure out a particularly hard problem. The attention embarrassed Lilly and she turned away her face so that he could not see it.

"And why do you care, if I may ask?" he said. "This isn't your pack. This isn't your home. If anything, you should want them all to be destroyed for what they did to you and yours."

Lilly now vigorously shook her head, so vigorously that the bangs fell over her left eye. It was her old hair-style, the type she had not worn since she married Garth. But now she did not have the energy or the concern to push it out of the way.

"I don't… I don't want anybody to have… to have… to die," Lilly said, fumbling over her words a bit as she tried to explain. "I know I'm supposed to hate them… but they're wolves too and nobody deserves to be killed."

Cyril nodded. "If you say so. But it should be quite a show, at any rate."

"You really don't care about them at all, do you?" Lilly asked.

Cyril shook his head. "Fortunately, flower, I don't share your misplaced concern. Like I said before, let them all die."

"But what about your family?" Lilly was hesitant to ask this, in case it was a touchy subject, but she did not know another way of getting through to Cyril. "You must have family around somewhere."

"I'm sure I do," Cyril answered.

Lilly looked at him, her one visible eye full of sympathy. She tilted her head slightly. "Do you mean, you never met them?"

Cyril shrugged what would pass on a wolf for eyebrows. "I guess I must have met my mother sometime. She was probably with me when I was born, I figure."

Lilly could not help but chuckle at this remark. Cyril smiled to see it.

"But in all seriousness," he continued, "I don't remember any of them. Maybe I could if I wanted to. But for some reason, I have the impression that they were all terribly tedious people, so I don't bother."

"You're not like any wolf I've ever met," Lilly said, without fully realizing that she was saying it out loud.

Cyril chuckled at what he took to be a compliment. "That goes for both of us," he responded. "But let's get you home. I'm sure they're done playing soldiers for now and we can learn what they've decided – as if we didn't know! But I wouldn't want Conn to think you'd tried to escape your gilded cage or he might never let you out again."

"That could be trouble," Lilly muttered quietly.

"You don't know the half of it," Cyril responded.

* * *

**What did the pack leaders decide? Is war coming to the Cascade Pack?**

**Read on.**


	7. Liberté! Égalité! Fraternité!

**I just have a quick note to make this time. My _101 Dalmatians_/_Alpha and Omega_ crossover "A Confluence of Hearts", staring Cadpig and Lilly, is out now. Some rather interesting things are going to happen in that story. You just might want to check it out.**

**Now back to your (not all that) regularly-scheduled story.**

* * *

"It must be war!" shouted an elderly grey wolf, who seemed barely capable of fighting himself. But the announcement received cheers from his surrounding fellows.

"War? You all really want war?" Conn shouted back. "Don't you realize that we'd be spelling our own doom? Please, everyone, reconsider!"

"No!" shouted a beige wolf, the very one who had been the cause of Lilly's downfall. "If these curs are not stopped here, they will hound us to the ends of the earth until they exterminate us all! We must resist and hold them back!"

This statement, too, was met with cheers.

"But we can't resist," Conn countered.

"We have the numbers," said the beige wolf, Cormac. "Just like we had the numbers to put down those Jasper fools and take one of their own back here with us!"

"Numbers? You want to talk numbers?" Conn barked. "From what I hear, the call has already gone out throughout the Republic for three hundred-thousand more to join their army and come up here! You want to oppose something like that?"

"They'll never be able to produce numbers like that," Cormac countered. "You know it and I know it. It almost sounds to me, _oh_ _fearless leader_, that you are afraid to fight them. Maybe it is that you are enjoying your new bride too much to be willing to die. This despite the fact that all of us have lost ours."

"You leave her out of this!" Conn shouted as he pounded his fist on the ground. "This isn't about her! And if you remember, I only took her because that was the purpose of our war in the first place!"

Cormac sneered. "You don't have to remind me! I lost my whole family to those Jasper monsters just so that you could get a new one! Now that was no fair trade! But when it comes to actually defending our territory, you balk!"

Conn shook his head in frustration as his whole council cheered Cormac. "It's not a question of what I want to do or not. It's a question of what we are able to do. We were able to defeat Jasper, we cannot defeat the Republic. Whether or not they manage to field the greater numbers, they have technology like we could never dream of! We'll be signing our own death-warrant."

Adeimantus now cautiously broke in. "If it please you, my chief, I do have a point to make. We did capture the Cur officer when we took out his little militia. Perhaps we could interrogate him and thereby gain an advantage over our enemies."

Conn shook his head against it, but the shouts from the council meant his objection went unnoticed. As Adeimantus cleared a way into the center of the circle, Glaucon escorted the prisoner. It was a strange-looking dog, appearing to be a corgi for the most part, but with scarlet fur quite uncharacteristic of the breed. This creature stood close to the ground on stubby legs, but his eyes burned with celestial fire.

Conn sighed and resigned himself to what was to happen. He did not like this, but he might as well try to keep some control. "And what is this prisoner's name?" he asked.

"Sinclair," Glaucon said as he pushed the prisoner into the center of the circle.

The small prisoner resented the action and pushed Glaucon's paws away. Then he looked at Conn defiantly and snarled. "That's Citizen Sinclair to you!"

Which was promptly rewarded by a fist to the face from Glaucon. The small dog toppled to the ground. But just as quickly, he was on his feet, smiling as the blood dripped from his mouth.

"So, is that the best you got, you fur-coat reject?" the corgi taunted.

This was rewarded with another fist from Glaucon.

Now, this might have been enough to silence another individual. It might have even broken a more sensitive one. But the Cascade Pack was not in luck. Whereas most people anguish over the costs of war, there is a certain type of individual who is never happier than when making great sacrifices for the cause. This individual never feels more alive than when facing deadly odds in the name of cause and country. Citizen Sinclair was this type of individual.

He got up, wiped the blood from his mouth, and spit in Glaucon's face. Glaucon grabbed him by the neck and began to strangle him. The corgi actually seemed to laugh as he endured it.

"Glaucon, stop!" Conn ordered. "If you kill him, we can't get any information from him! And then where would we be?"

Glaucon dropped the corgi, who landed on his feet and showed no signs of being any worse for wear.

"Now," Conn said, "what were you and your militia doing in our territory?"

"Your territory? _Your territory?_" Citizen Sinclair raged. "This is the sovereign territory of the Cur Republic! And as Republican military forces, my patrol and I will go anywhere we please!"

Conn shook his head sadly. "And I had hoped that after we were forced from California, you would leave us alone. I thought you had enough land then."

Citizen Sinclair spit on the ground and guffawed. "It's not a question of what we need or don't need. This land is ours, you live on it by our grace, and we will do whatever we like with it! But if you ask me, it would have been much better if all you wolves had drowned in the Pit River with the others! That's the only place I'd ever give you!"

A great angry howl collectively emanated from the wolves, all of whom had lost friends, family, mates, children in the great massacre of the Pit River. Sinclair smiled at the effect he had achieved. Glaucon quickly backhanded him.

"Everybody, everybody, be silent!" Conn ordered, though to little avail.

Citizen Sinclair got to his feet, the smile still on his face. "The only good wolf is a dead wolf, I always say!"

Just as things were getting back to order, this caused another round of howls. Conn expected that all of the other wolves in the assembly would soon rush down and tear Sinclair to pieces. From the look on Citizen Sinclair's face, this might have been just what he wanted to happen.

Conn put his face in his paw and massaged an eagle-shaped white spot just under his eye. He did this whenever he began to think his command would break him.

Seeing their leader in such shape, the wolves began to calm down, but it was still a few minutes before they had fallen silent completely. By the time they did, a new mood of gloom had fallen over the entire assembly. Which was fitting, because Conn had a gloomy question to ask.

"Will they send an army north?" he said without looking up.

Citizen Sinclair smiled in haughty pride. "I don't doubt it. They will send an army. They will send a giant army. And they will destroy you."

Conn finally lifted his head and nodded solemnly. "I feared as much. Now, tell us about this army, who shall com–"

"You know what I hope?" Citizen Sinclair continued, not caring one bit that he had just interrupted his captors' leader. "I hope that you run. I hope you run all the way to the Northwest Passage. That way, we can continue marching. We can continue marching up north after you and destroy every single wolf-pack from here to Alaska. And then there shall be an empire of liberty throughout the north where doghood and civilization can wipe out every trace of wolfkind, every single last one of you. _Viva la République!_"

A collective gasp went around the assembly, seeming to start at the spot nearest the corgi and moving outward in both directions like a wave until the two movements met at the exact opposite point of the circle. Even Conn was stunned to silence.

Glaucon was the first to react. He punched Citizen Sinclair in the gut. "Can I just kill him now?" he asked, though he did not seem likely to wait for the answer. Neither did the majority of the assembly, which cheered him on most heartily.

"No!" Conn shouted, standing up. "Don't kill him! He's the only bargaining chip we have with the Cur Republic! We need to keep him alive for now!"

Citizen Sinclair laughed as he recovered himself. "The Republic does not negotiate with savages!"

"Why do we need him?" Glaucon asked Conn, ignoring the corgi's newest outburst. "We kept Tony alive and it didn't make a lick of difference! Killing him was what scared the Jasper wolves into surrender!"

Conn sighed. "Jasper was small and could be pushed around by those methods. We cannot scare the curs because there are too many of them. We can only try to get them to leave us alone."

Glaucon growled at his wish being denied.

"Take him to the prison-cave," Conn said wearily. "Keep him alive there for now. This is serious; the fate of our pack relies on keeping him alive. Do you understand? Anyone who kills him will be killing our pack! Do you understand?"

Glaucon nodded hesitantly, "Yes, sir."

The crowd had been stunned into silence before, but now a few of them muttered disagreements. But Glaucon did as he was told. He lifted Citizen Sinclair up and pulled him along. The other wolves took this as a sign that it was time to disband.

As Citizen Sinclair was being dragged out of sight, he saw the opportunity to get one last dig in at the wolves. He shouted.

_ "Liberté! Égalité! Fraternité!"_

* * *

**War is coming. Shall the Cascade Pack survive?**

**Read on.**


	8. North and South

An amber eye overlooked the deep forest beyond the Cascades. Every detail, every single bush and tree that could be seen from that height was reflected in that shifting ring of gold. But one thing was missing. The forest was so dense, seen from this height, that all the life down there was hidden from this shining light.

"They have to be down there," Kate said in disgust. "If only we could see them!"

"I know," Humphrey said, standing beside her. "How inconsiderate of them not to put up a sign around here saying 'Pack Central Down Here, Enemies Enter Through Back'."

Kate turned to Humphrey and smiled. While she seemed to have little time for laughter these days, Humphrey always had a way of brightening her dower mood.

"I don't care where they are," Garth said as he walked up beside them. "All I know is that Lilly's down there and finding her is all I care about."

"Don't worry, big guy," Humphrey said, "we're going to get her back. As long as me and Kate are on the case, there's no one who is going to keep us from bringing her back safe and sound. Isn't that right, Kate?"

Kate did not answer.

"Kate?" Humphrey asked again. "Earth to Kate?"

Kate suddenly turned her head as though she had heard Humphrey for the first time. "We had better get going," she said, "We have to find them and get in before anyone knows we're here."

"As soon as I get my hands on those Cascade wolves, I'll tear 'em apart," Garth said. "Just thinking about all the things they must have done to her by now, it just makes me want to…."

Garth brought his paw down hard on a twig, splintering it. He did not even notice the pain as little pieces of wood embedded themselves into his paw.

"Well, I'm sure you'll get your chance soon," Edgar, his rust-colored subordinate, said behind him. "I too can't wait for the chance to tear out some throats."

"Where were you when the war was going on the first time?" Humphrey asked, having not recalled seeing Edgar then.

"I could ask you the same thing," Edgar retorted gruffly.

"We don't have time for this sitting around!" Can-do said as he came before them. "If we're going to go stomp a new one on those foreign devils, we should do it now!"

Hutch followed him and quickly grabbed his shoulder. "Can-do, we don't really need your attitude right now. This operation is going to require delicacy, tact, and cunning."

"Are you saying I'm not delicate?" Can-do yelled, probably loud enough to wake the dead. "That I'm not tactful? What gives you ideas like that?"

Hutch looked at him with something like pity. "I haven't the slightest clue," he answered tartly.

"Guys, if I may say so," Shakey said as he followed, "I don't know if it's best to rush in. Maybe we should get a feel for the area and try to determine the pack's routine and scope first."

Though he knew Humphrey well, speaking around the other pack leaders was something Shakey still found filled with difficulty.

"You know, Shakey's right," Humphrey opined. "There are times for jumping in blindly, like when you're about to do some log-sledding down Dead Man's Curve. And then there are times for caution, like when you're walking into the lion's den of the largest pack in the known universe."

Kate shook her head. "They're wolves, not lions, Humphrey. Besides, we will be getting a feel for the area and the scope of the enemy when we go in."

Humphrey tilted his head. "Now, call me crazy, but didn't somebody once say something about 'Fools rush in where angels fear to tread'?"

"But he talked about about man, not wolf, so we're good," Shakey said helpfully.

"Not helping your own case," Humphrey whispered to him despite the fact that everyone else could still hear.

"While I do think Humphrey and the other Omega's hesitance is a bit extreme," Hutch said.

"Cowards," Can-do muttered under his breath. "Just like all Omegas."

Hutch ignored him and continued, "I do believe that some caution is necessary. Ma'am, if you or Humphrey or Garth would be captured, I shudder to think what would happen to you and to us. You are our natural leaders and will still be needed despite all we have lost. But Can-do and I can risk ourselves without the same consequences. Please let us lead the mission to find Lilly and the Cascade Pack while you stay here and plan our next move."

At this, Garth jumped into Hutch's face. "What? Lilly is out there somewhere, suffering, in pain, being beaten and tortured and I can't bear to think of what else by those monsters! She needs me! And you would have me just sit it out? Any kind of fool could see that she's my mate and I'm the one who should rescue her!"

"I could see that," Edgar noted.

"What did I tell you, any fool," Garth said. "But you want me to just leave her to her fate?"

"Pardon me, sir," Hutch said respectfully, upset that he might have insulted his superior, "but I don't want to forget about Lilly any more than you do. We will find her, sir, and then we will end all that she has had to go through. I promise you that."

"There's an old saying in the East," Garth muttered as he glared darkly at Hutch, "A Beta's promises are like caribou committing suicide; too good to be true."

"Hey, I like that," Edgar the Beta said.

"But I need to be the one to save Lilly," Garth continued. "She's my mate and she's counting on me! Don't you understand that, she needs me!"

But before he knew it, he was no longer staring into Hutch's face. Rather, he was staring into Humphrey's. The Omega had jumped between the Alpha and the Beta. "Hey, hey now, Garth, Hutch didn't mean anything by it. We all know how you love Lilly. You love her almost as much as Kate loves me! But you won't do any good for her if you go and get yourself killed down there. How do you think she'll feel if, after waiting so long for you to save her, the first thing she sees of you in months is your bloody, mangled corpse?"

Garth backed away and gave pause. Slowly, he nodded. "You're right, Humphrey."

Humphrey sighed in relief. But his relief soon turned to horror when Can-do decided to speak up. "Hmph, I doubt she's got much hope after she was kidnapped under his watch at home."

Garth felt like a dagger had torn through his heart. Nobody beat themselves up more for the events of that day than he did. He should have been there, he knew, for her. He should not have slept soundly while she disappeared from Jasper forever. He should have heard, he should have awakened, _he should have known_.

As he backed away from Can-do's burning glare, the first moments of awakening to find Lilly missing played over and over in his head. As Humphrey discovered in amazement that he did not have to die breaking up a fight between two very volatile wolves, Garth turned away from the group and tears began to tear down his cream snout.

But something was wrong that day, he knew. He knew Lilly must not have gone willingly. She must have been kidnapped. She loved Garth too much to ever leave him willingly. But wouldn't she have screamed? Did she scream, scream his name, and he had not heard it? Could he, somewhere deep in slumber, have chosen not to hear it so he could gain his much-desired rest? And did she watch in heartbroken horror as he slept on, uncaringly, breaking his promise to always protect her? Did she cry for love betrayed as he peacefully allowed her to be brutally hauled from his life forever?

But he should have heard. He always heard her voice, no matter what. Had he been buried six feet under he should still have, like Arthur's knight, heard her cry from a thousand miles. And there should have been scuff-marks upon the cave-floor. There should have been blood, even; if not her attackers' blood, then at least her own pure sanguine. He knew how Lilly had never acted in anger or violence her whole life, but Garth also knew that, when defending herself or him, even she must be willing to put up a fight.

So what was wrong with this picture? Garth did not want to know, for he knew that if he knew, it could unravel the narrative of kidnap, of lovers cruelly parted and a damsel in distress waiting for her shining knight to rescue her, the comfortable story which had allowed him to survive the harsh months without her.

While Garth found himself in reverie, the discussion had continued without him.

"So Humphrey agrees with Hutch's plan!" Kate proclaimed.

What? No!" Humphrey said, his eyes wide with that peculiar realization that he had, in trying to stop one mistake, made an even bigger one. "All I was saying was we need to be cau–"

"Hutch, you're plan's approved," Kate said. "Take Can-do and Edgar with you."

"What?" Can-do and Edgar shouted together.

"I don't want that cur with me!" Can-do said, waving a fist at Edgar.

"Tiny doesn't deserve to be in my presence," Edgar said, waving his own fist at Can-do. "If he's going to treat me like that, I'm not going!"

"You two are going together, and that's an order!" Kate said sternly.

Humphrey smiled as best he could. "Dysfunction, the main ingredient in any successful team! But Kate, shouldn't we–"

"No, Humphrey," Kate responded. "We've made our decision together and now we have to stand by it together."

Humphrey looked away. It was times like these that he knew Kate had him beaten. What more could he say to her? It was just like during the war. All the times of trying to say, "Kate, maybe we shouldn't go about blindly fighting the Cascade pack. Kate, maybe we should listen to their side of the story. Kate, maybe we shouldn't be okay with our wolves taking innocent lives." But she had always cut him down. She had always chosen to cut him down. He, like Lilly, had spent the whole war powerlessly watching from the sidelines as things got worse and worse. Sometimes, he wondered if she had just run away, just run away to escape all the needless bloodshed. He knew he wished he had the courage to do so.

Then Humphrey saw Shakey shaking out of the corner of his eye. He had an idea. "Okay," he said, "if we're really going through with this, I think Shakey should go as well."

Shakey's head bobbed up and down like he was a bobble-head statue. "M-m-m-me? Why me?"

"Yeah, Humphrey, why Shakey?" Kate asked incredulously.

"He's too short to do anything useful," Can-do muttered.

"Almost as short as you," Edgar said with a mean chuckle.

"Wait, wait, everybody," Humphrey said as he motioned with his paws for them to calm down. "Just listen to me for once. I think we can all agree that Shakey's the smartest one here and he'd probably be the best at figuring out how to overcome any, ahem, _obstacles _you might encouter. I mean, if you guys are really going to charge in like this boneheads first, you need someone who can recognize when it's a trap you're rushing into. That's why Shakey should go."

"B-b-but Humphrey," Shakey protested, looking at Humphrey as though his best friend had just joyfully put at hit out on him, "I-I-I'm not cut out to be part of a rescue operation! I'm just… I'm just Shakey!"

Humphrey walked over and put his foreleg around his little buddy's shoulder. "Come on, Shakey, you said we need to be more cautious. And who knows better about that than you? You'll be able to keep the A-Team here out of danger. Which will come mostly from each other, so why worry? Besides," he winked as he said the next bit, "I think there's more inside of you than you realize!"

"Really?" Shakey said in amazement. No one had ever tried to say he was worth something before.

Humphrey nodded in a fatherly manner. "Yep, and you just need the opportunity to bring it out!"

"Um, um, um," Shakey said shakily, as though trying to recite a mantra, "I guess if you really think so, I guess…. I guess I could go with them."

"That's three guesses in one sentence," Can-do observed spitefully. "_I guess_ he's not really sure!"

"Almost as many guesses as you!" Edgar taunted.

"That one didn't even make sense!" Can-do barked back.

"Yes it did," Edgar retorted. "You said 'three guesses' and then you said 'I guess'. Well, three guesses plus one guess equals four guesses, chum!"

Can-do was stunned silent by this offbeat way of making the weaker argument the stronger.

"Garth, any objections?" Kate asked.

Garth did not answer, as he was still too lost in to past to know what was occurring in the here and now.

"Okay, it's unanimous," Kate said. "Get ready to leave immediately. Hutch, can I speak to you for a moment?"

Kate and Hutch walked a few paces away from the group. Finally, Kate stopped, looked Hutch in the eye, and spoke in a hushed voice.

"You know what you have to do, right?" she said. "If you find Lilly, you remember what we discussed, yes? We're absolutely counting on you here. We've lost too much for someone to mess this up."

Hutch nodded solemnly. "Don't worry, ma'am. I know what you need from me. And I'll never betray that confidence, no matter what happens."

"I always knew I could rely on you," Kate said. "But don't share it with anybody else until absolutely necessary."

"What about Garth?" Hutch said. "Don't you think he deserves to know?"

Kate looked passed Hutch to where Humphrey was now vainly trying to break Garth from his reverie. She turned back and sadly shook her head. "He's suffering too much as it is, the poor fool. He doesn't need to have this to worry about right now, too."

Hutch's eyes locked with Kate's. "I understand, ma'am. What you command I will carry out. No matter what. That's my promise, my vow."

Kate nodded and walked back toward the group. Hutch followed. They all knew that, before nightfall, they would either have won something back or lost everything.

* * *

**Hutch has a mission.**

**Perhaps the most vital mission a Jasper wolf has ever had.**

**Shall he succeed?**

**Read on.**


	9. Homecoming

It had taken a while, but now the Cascade range was once again in view, no longer steeped in trees and hidden in sight. Lilly looked at it with mixed emotions. While she was glad to have made it back in a reasonable amount of time and thus to have escaped whatever punishment a late return might be worth to the Oregon wolves, she dreaded having to face whatever new cruelties they had thought up for her while she was away.

"Home, sweet home," Cyril said as he came up beside her and stared at the towering mountains. "You know, they would be quite breathtaking if those savages hadn't occupied them. Then again, sometimes beauty desecrated is even more beautiful."

Lilly suddenly felt his eyes fall upon her. She looked up to meet them.

"You going to be okay?" he asked.

Lilly nodded slightly. "I'll be fine. I'm more worried about you. You sure they won't hurt you or anything for talking to me?"

Cyril smiled. "What's it matter? With the way they treat me already, physical harm might be a step up."

Lilly looked down at her paws, worried that she would be the cause of Cyril getting hurt by the others. Seeing this, Cyril put his foreleg around her to comfort her.

"Don't worry, flower," he said as they began to walk again, "whatever happens, we'll face it together. Deal?"

"Deal," Lilly answered quietly without looking up.

However, as soon as she had spoken, they heard voices from not far off, not far off at all.

"Who's that?" Lilly asked in confusion, as the voices where a little too far and a little too unfamiliar for her to make out clearly.

Cyril held his paw to his snout to signal her to remain silent for a moment. Together, the two of them headed toward these other voices. But they were not prepared for what happened next.

Suddenly, there was a loud, terrifying shriek. And from behind one of the trees, Sybil lunged for them, specifically for Lilly. Our white heroine braced for impact, but it turned out to be unnecessary. Sybil came short and fell to the ground. But then she looked up, and her evil eyes once more locked with Lilly's.

"Ah, so the traitor comes even here, is it?" she said, her voice hoarse and frightening. "How funny and how wicked, how glorious and how terrible, that the doom of this pack should be right in their own heart and they don't even know it! Bloodshed begets bloodshed, mark my words! From the white wolf's actions, many have died and many shall die!"

Lilly began taking steps back as Sybil's voice rose with each word. She felt herself tremble more and more as Sybil crawled closer toward her, her brown eyes filled with maddening delight.

But then Cyril jumped in front of Lilly. "Get out of here, you old bat!" he yelled as he knocked Sybil backwards.

Sybil sneered as she tried to steady herself. "That's right, that's right! Mock my words, for it proves them right! Only liars mock truth!"

Suddenly, from out of the woods, another wolf appeared. This was a tan wolf with eyes somewhere between green and yellow in color. He was somewhat tall and lean, and Lilly thought him rather handsome despite the fact that he was not at all muscular like Garth. His face was young, certainly younger than Cyril's and perhaps even younger than Lilly's. Of course, Lilly doubted she had very young of a face anymore.

This new wolf lowered himself to help Sybil up. As she regained her footing, he glared at Cyril. Then his gaze shifted to Lilly.

"Leave her alone!" he barked. "Both of you, leave her alone. I know you type of people, you always mock her like you think she's a clown, here for your amusement. You all make me sick."

"It's not like that, really," Lilly began to say. "We don't think there's anything–"

"Shut up, you!" the tan wolf said. "Little Miss Northern Princess, thinking you can just look down your nose at the rest of us. What gives you the right to judge us?"

"Nothing!" Lilly said. "I don't judge you, I really don't!"

Cyril, meanwhile, was watching all this unfold with a haughty smile. "Felix, what gives you the right to judge us for judging you, I wonder? Especially because you can't blame us! After all, however we treat dearest Sybil, you'd be the first to say it wasn't our choice!"

Felix had been preparing his retort but now fell silent. By this time, he had finished getting Sybil to her paws. Having apparently lost interest in the conversation, she sped off back into the woods, cackling and raving as though the whole incident had never occurred. But Felix, the whole time, did not break his glare from Cyril.

"Oh, don't look at me like that," Cyril said, "and don't act so high and mighty. I don't even know why you put up with that hag."

"Sybil can't help the way she is," Felix responded. "She was made to be the voice of prophecy, and prophecy always comes with a price."

Cyril threw up his paws. "There you go again! You talk about it like you believe that hogwash. But if you ask me, fortune-telling is the dullest thing in the world. Cards and crystal-balls and tea-leaves are all such wastes of time. Don't you think so, flower?"

Lilly looked up in surprise, amazed that she had somehow gotten pulled into the conversation. "I… I… I don't… I don't know much about it. My sister used… used to say that she had dreams that told the future."

Felix now pointed to Cyril. "There you go! There you go! Even the white devil admits it!"

Cyril shrugged. "If flower says that's its real, then it must be real. That doesn't make it any less dull though. But enough talk about fortunes. It doesn't really matter how anyone's life turns out anyway. Tell me, have our _respected elders_ made their decision about the war?"

"Yes," Felix responded, "and they're going to war."

Cyril clapped his paws together in delight. "Excellent! They'll all be annihilated! What a show!"

"No!" Lilly cried out. "No! Not another war!"

"I told you, flower," Cyril responded, "there is always another war. Accept the fact and

you might learn to enjoy it."

"How can you say that, Cyril?" Lilly cried. "War is… war is evil! You can't seriously want it to happen!" Then she turned toward Felix, seeing him as her last hope for sanity even though she did not realize it. "You, you've got to see that another war just means more killing, more destruction, more death! You see that, don't you?"

Felix was surprised by Lilly's outburst. But he just shrugged. "Whatever will be, will be. It was all decided a long time ago and ain't nobody who could change it. Especially not you, miss."

"So, you two are just giving up?" Lilly said, her voice so desperate that it was sliding into anger. "You two don't think it's worth trying to stop the war? You don't think it's worth making that choice?"

"I never make choices," Felix answered. "I never do anything out of free will."

"That's because you don't believe in free will," Cyril answered smugly.

"At least I'm not like you; you don't believe in anything," Felix shot back.

"On the contrary," Cyril said, "I believe in beauty. And that's all I need to believe in."

Felix seemed to grow increasingly upset, as though this conversation was getting the better of him and he did not know how to respond. Finally, he said, "It's a good thing for you that I don't believe in choices, or else I'd hate you for choosing to act like you do."

And without another word, he stormed off into the forest. Cyril watched him go with delight. "Oh, come now," he called out, "an insult like that is too pitiable to warrant my attention. Don't you have anything else?"

But Felix was gone.

"I guess we showed him, eh flower?" Cyril remarked as he smiled in Lilly's direction.

When Lilly did not answer, he turned to see what was wrong. She was once again locked deep in thought and would not even look at him.

"Flower, what's wrong?" he asked as he put his paw on her shoulder.

"You didn't have to hit her," Lilly responded, lifting her eyes to Cyril's for the first time.

"I was trying to defend you," he said.

"Still, there were other ways to do it. You didn't have to do that to her. And you didn't have to be so rude about it to him."

Cyril sighed. "There you go again. That old bleeding heart! Always trying to make everybody see the best in everybody else. And anything less is a crime!"

"It's not that," Lilly answered, her voice trying to find some kind of firmness to steady her heart. She wanted to look away, but knew that she could not if she was going to get her point across. "It's just that you shouldn't have hit her. She's old and frail. Does hurting her make you any better than the others who hurt me?"

"Well, you didn't stop me, flower, so how much better does that make you?" Cyril barked in frustration.

Lilly's jaw dropped slightly. All the light seemed to disappear from her eyes. She could not answer. She did not even know what she could even begin to say to that. So, instead, she quickly ran off, off into the forest, as far away from Cyril as she could.

"Lilly, I'm sorry! I didn't mean it!" he called after her, but it was too late. She was gone.

Lilly ran through the forest, approaching the mountains. Within a moment, she had the bottom of the path leading up into those mountains, the path which the Cascade wolves used the communal meeting places and, for a lucky few, their dens.

But before Lilly could get a good look at it, she fell the ground. Something – or someone – had smacked hard against her chest and knocked her down. As Lilly regained her focus, she saw Glaucon standing above her. Adeimantus was not far behind him.

"Well, well, well, and where have we been off to today?" Glaucon said wickedly. "Trying to sneak away when nobody was looking, huh?"

"No, I wasn't!" Lilly answered. "I was just out for a walk, honest."

"Oh, shut up!" Glaucon said. Then, to enforce his demand, he stamped his paw down upon her ribs, at the exact point which had been broken before and which both of them knew was not fully healed.

Lilly heard, or rather felt, the crack of bone. Eyes dimmed by emotional pain seemed to griw a little dimmer as physical pain surged outward from her rib through the rest of her body. She found herself unable to speak as the pain was too great. All she could do was let out a little whimper as her head fell back into the ground at an unnatural angle and her eyes began to close in despair.

"Come on, come on, let me do something!" Adeimantus said as he approached.

"You'll get your turn after I've finished with her," Glaucon responded. "Now, what else should I break? Maybe that pretty little snout of yours."

He forced Lilly's face into the dirt as he put his paw on her snout. She felt her neck twist in a way it was not designed to and pieces of rock and dust filled her nostrils, almost clogging them. Her eyes could not close fast enough to avoid the burning cascade of dirt particles that made them want to tear up. But Lilly refused to cry, especially now when she was directly under attack. She had learned long ago to pray for her enemies, not to cry before them.

Glaucon's paw was slowly increased its pressure. He was serious about breaking her snout, apparently, but was going to take his time and get as much out of this moment as possible.

"Get off her!" came a voice from behind them, Cyril's voice. Though Lilly's eyes were still filled with dirt, she could just barely see Cyril appear overhead. Then she felt the mighty weight suddenly lift and she turned her eyes to see that Cyril had pushed Glaucon off of her.

Cyril than grabbed her paw and gently lifted her from the ground. "Are you okay?" he asked as her studied her and tried to wipe off as much dirt as possible.

Lilly held her rib in pain, but said, "I'll be fine, I'll be fine."

Now Cyril turned on her attackers. "How dare you too do that to her! She's our pack leader's mate! What were you two thinking?"

Glaucon snarled. "If you had seen the things her pack did to ours up north, Cyril, you wouldn't be defending her."

"And since when do you respect our pack leader?" Adeimantus added.

"That's all you two brutes are good at, isn't it?" Cyril barked. "What about when the curs come north? You still going to spend all your time beating on her rather than fighting them off? What good will that do anybody?"

Glaucon and Adeimantus now backed off slightly. They exchanged looks of guilt.

Cyril looked from one to the other of them. "Yeah, I thought so."

"Wait," Adeimantus said, beginning to advance again, "why are we even listening to you? Where were you when we were fighting the Jasper dogs? And just who did you lose at the Pit River?"

"Yeah," Glaucon said as he too advanced, "we were the ones who lost everything while you sit here fooling around with the northern rat. So don't you be lecturing us, Cyril!"

Cyril made to block Lilly as the two bigger wolves bore down menacingly upon them. Lilly looked at him as best she could, considering that her eyes were now watery and red from the dirt, and saw that he seemed to have absolutely no fear as the two large wolves bore down on them.

"I think it's time we teach pretty-boy a lesson, don't you?" Glaucon said with a vicious smile.

"Then we'll finish up with his girlfriend," Adeimantus added, revealing his teeth.

"Well, well, you two do have such ambitious plans, don't you?" Cyril mocked. "And when you get done with us, I wonder what your little minds will set themselves to smashing next." His gaze now fixed itself behind the two towering terrors. "But I would seriously consider reconsidering if I were you, because this could get you in some serious trouble."

"You have no authority over us," Adeimantus said as he approached Cyril, ready to bite.

"But I do!" came Conn's voice behind them.

Glaucon and Adeimantus jumped and turned to face him, both trying to give some awkward kind of salute but bumping clumsily into each other instead.

"Sir, we just noticed your mate was gone and we went to find her," Glaucon said apologetically.

"Yeah, we just meant to bring her back to you, sir," Adeimantus added.

Conn looked at them suspiciously, and with a sense of fury buried underneath. "I have a pretty good idea of what you two meant to do. Now get out of here before I do something about it."

Glaucon and Adeimantus both tried their clumsy salute again and began to rush away. But then suddenly, Adeimantus stopped.

"Sir," he said, "if I may, there was something else I wanted to talk to you about."

Conn gave him a look of utter disbelief, disbelief over the fact that this wolf would dare to try and talk with his superior after being caught abusing his superior's mate. But Conn felt it was still his duty to listen. "What is it?" he asked angrily and impatiently.

"Well, I think… I think I have a way to hold off… hold off the Curs," Adeimantus said, his voice cracking. Certainly, he must have had some nerve to address Conn, for how else could he be so nervous doing it?

"What are you thinking?" Conn was skeptical, but as he had no clue how to defend his pack, he had to be open to anything.

"During our last hunt, I remembered that the reason the river's so low this time of year is because of the dams up ahead. You know, the natural pile-ups and the beaver dams that clog the river up for a while. I was just thinking that if we could just break the dams, the river would return to its normal strength and be impossible to cross again. It would stop the Curs dead."

"Until the beavers rebuild the dams, that is," Conn said.

Adeimantus put on a shivering smile. "In that case, sir, we could just kill all the beavers. It's not like they're people."

Conn sighed and then was silent for a few moments. He seemed to be sorrowfully turning things over in his head, as though he had been given two unsavory choices and had to choose the least unpalatable of them. Finally, he nodded. "Fine. When the Curs arrive, break the dams. But don't kill any beavers! This is a canine war and a canine war it shall stay!"

"Yes, sir, of course, sir," Adeimantus said with several hurried nods and another salute before running away in the direction Glaucon had disappeared in.

Conn now turned back to Cyril and Lilly. Unfortunately, despite having just saved them, the look in his eyes betrayed no sympathy.

"Well, I guess that was one lucky break, then," Cyril remarked. "But those brutes needed to be taught a lesson. It was high time you finally put your paw down, if I may say so. We might make a leader out of you yet!"

Conn showed no sign of being amused by this prattle. Rather, his steely gaze refused to break from Cyril's icy eyes.

"Lilly, come with me, now," Conn ordered. "And stay away from my mate, Cyril."

Cyril began to protest as Lilly slipped by him and reluctantly found herself at Conn's side. But before he could speak, Conn said, "No arguments, Cyril. Keep away from Lilly; that's an order."

Lilly could not bear to look back at Cyril as she slowly followed Conn back upward toward their den. Nor could she bear to look at Conn, who did not seem to mind walking ahead. Instead, she looked to her paws and tried to wipe out all the bad things that had occurred this day from her mind.

As always, it did not work.

* * *

**The Cascade Pack has a new stratagem but old tensions run high.**

**Shall they be able to put aside their differences to save their home and themselves?**

**Read on.**


	10. Shadows and Light

As soon as they reached the den, Lilly rolled herself up in as little of a ball as she could manage and let her sorrows guide her off to sleep. She did not bother to see what Conn was doing; it really did not matter. If she could not hope for anything better in waking life, she figured, at least she could hope for a dream.

Lilly was used to having dreams of her old life, of happy times with Garth or of the things that could have been had they been allowed to build a life together. She knew that they were the closest thing to any of that which she could now experience and they gave her the only happiness she still knew in this life. She looked forward to them each night as her only way of seeing Garth again and getting to have the family she always wanted with him.

If you told Lilly that none of it mattered because they were just illusions, just fragments of past memories, she would not have believed you. For, in her mind, as long as she was in the dream, it was real and all the misery of the Cascades was an illusion. Though it was back to hardship and suffering upon awakening, Lilly knew she could not survive without believing in her dreams.

But today's dream would be of no comfort. For there was no Garth to hold her to him and no happy images of playful red-and-white pups cavorting around the happy couple. Rather, what Lilly saw horrified her. Standing before her was Tony, looking as grim and gruesome as the last time Lilly had seen him, or a part of him, at least. He had his head attached to his body once more – barely – but it could hardly be called an improvement, in that he still looked like a corpse and nothing more. He looked so otherworldly, so supernaturally fiendish that Lilly's instinct was to turn and run away. But she found that she could not.

"You did this to me, Lilly," he said, "and now you're paying the price. You had to make my son look at flowers when he should have been protecting me, and now you have to suffer just as I did. Except peace will never come to you like it did to me. The peace of death is not something you'll get to know for a long, long time. If even death can bring peace to one such as you."

"B-b-but Mr. Tony, I'm sorry!" Lilly screamed. "I didn't mean for this to happen! I never wanted you to get hurt!"

"Selfish, simpering girl," Tony remarked. "Never capable of doing the right thing. Garth is better off without you. Jasper is better off without you. Everyone is better off without you."

"They were right, when she was born," came another voice. Lilly was surprised to see Eve, looking as thin and tired and gaunt as in the dark days of war – if not more so – materialize in front of her. "They said she would prove a curse on our pack, and look at what's happened! She deserted us, she abandoned us, like we meant nothing to her! She was happy to leave us to die for her sins."

"Mom, no!" Lilly cried. "I… I… I left to try and make peace! I really… I didn't want to leave you! I didn't want to leave you or dad or Kate or Humphrey or Garth, but I had to! It was the only way to save your lives! You have to believe me!"

Eve looked at her daughter, or through her, without any sort of feeling whatsoever. "Arrogant girl, always thinking she knows better than us what the right thing is. It never occurred that she might have been wrong, that she might have been doing more harm than good."

Lilly felt tears run down her cheeks. "No, mom, I just wanted to save you! I just wanted to save all of you!"

"Save us? Save us how?" came a third voice, her father's. Now Winston was standing before her as well, looking even more like a broken and defeated wolf than what she had known in the last days of the war. "Save yourself more like it. Save yourself from the terrible things that were to come after. You didn't really care about any of us. You abandoned us, you abandoned me, your mother, your sister, your mate, to our fates, all because you were too selfish and too cowardly to do what needed to be done. The same as always. Your sister at least had the pride and responsibility to stand up for something, but you were too frightened to be like her."

"All I wanted was peace!" Lilly shouted as loud as she could. "I didn't want anybody to die anymore! I wanted peace! Peace!"

"What do you know of peace?" Winston scolded. "Nothing you did ever could bring peace, and nothing you do ever will! You heartless little girl, you just plunge the world deeper into darkness! For once, it seems, the color of the dark is not black, but white."

Lilly felt herself falling apart under these words from her parents and father-in-law. This is no clever exaggeration. She literally felt her body grow weightier with each word and slowly become impossible to hold up. Now, lacking the strength to maintain herself, she crumbled to the ground as the three closed in around her. They shared a single chant of "Selfish girl, arrogant girl, a curse on the pack, a curse on the world."

"Nothing you did ever made a difference," Tony observed.

"You only ever made things worse," Winston added.

"It would have been best if you had never been born," Eve said.

Lilly tried to cover her eyes and ears with her paws but could not lift them. She found herself forced to endure this experience as the three hovered above her, growing more and more fearsome with every sentence they uttered. And Lilly could do nothing but watch as they came closer, closer, threatening to smother her in darkness.

"That's enough of that," came a voice from afar.

And suddenly, the darkness was pierced by a great light. Before Lilly's very eyes, the three shadows looked from one to the other in terror. They were driven back away from her by the light. As it engulfed their bodies, they tried to let out screams but could say nothing. Soon the shadows had melted away.

Lilly felt strength and hope returning to her body. Slowly, she picked herself up and was surprised to find that all her pain was gone, as though it had never been. She turned her head to see who – or what – had thus delivered her from the darkness.

And she immediately had to turn away again, for the light was too bright. But in it, for the brief second she had been able to see, she thought she had caught the form of another wolf. Lilly had no time to ponder this amazing fact, for the light seemed to be coming closer and closer. She sensed that this being was approaching her, though she still could not look at it. But as the light surrounded her, she felt it lay a paw comfortingly upon her head and play with the four white tresses there that formed the shape of a lily.

"Don't worry, Lilly," the being said in a strong, masculine voice. "Life may seem difficult for you now, but things will get better for you in the end. Always believe that, no matter what. You must believe that things shall get better."

And then, Lilly awoke to find herself in her den. The first thing she noticed was that she was shivering and covered in sweat, though she could not say that she felt either particularly hot or cold or even particularly terrified right now. Rather, she felt, for the first time since the war in the north began, a true and real sense of peace.

The second thing she noticed was that it was twilight in her new home as the orange skies made their distinct impression on the walls of her den.

The third thing she noticed was that Conn was talking to someone, someone whose voice sounded eerily familiar though it was difficult for Lilly to hear. She tried to listen, more as a reflex than out genuine interest, but still had trouble making anything out. All she could hear for certain was Conn saying, "What do you mean Lilly could be the solution to everything?"

* * *

**Who was Conn talking to?**

**And what did they know about Lilly?**

**Read on.**


End file.
